At least 45 killed in Karachi bomb attack

At least 45 people have been killed – including women and children – and
around 150 wounded after a bomb attack in Pakistan's largest city.

Residents gather at the site of a bomb blast in KarachiPhoto: ASIF HASSAN/AFP/Getty Images

6:46PM GMT 03 Mar 2013

The powerful blast in Karachi hit close to an area dominated by minority Shia Muslims, according to senior police official Ghulam Shabir, although he said the target of the attack was not immediately cleared.

"Women and children were among the dead and injured," Fayaz Lughari, police chief of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital, said.

He said the initial blast was followed by a second, but it was unclear whether or not this was also a bomb.

Ethnic, sectarian and politically-linked violence in Pakistan's financial capital killed at least 2,284 people in 2012 in the deadliest such violence for two decades, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Salman Ahmed, a spokesman for Edhi foundation rescue service, confirmed the blast and said the wounded had been taken to three different hospitals around the city.

On Monday a bomb blast at a Sufi shrine in southern Shikarpur district, some 250 miles northeast of Karachi, killed two people and wounded 10 others as devotees gathered to pay homage to a saint buried there.

Last month the Supreme Court ordered the authorities to come up with a strategy to protect Shias after a wave of bloody attacks in the southwest.

Two major bombings in the space of five weeks targeting Shia Hazaras in Quetta, capital of the southwestern province of Baluchistan, killed nearly 200 people.

Both attacks, the latest on February 16, were claimed by the banned extremist Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and have highlighted the government's inability to stem sectarian violence.

Pakistani rescuers gather at the site of the bomb blast in Karachi

Shias, who make up around one in five of the mostly Sunni Muslim population of 180 million, are facing a record numbers of attacks.

The Pakistani Taliban have also increased their campaign of violence in recent months, leading to fears that violence could mar a general election scheduled to take place by mid-May.

Last month the group proposed talks with Islamabad but the government insists the militants must declare a ceasefire before coming to the negotiating table – a condition militants have rejected.